One year in office, Castro has reason to celebrate

Published 12:00 am, Sunday, June 6, 2010

Back home, evidently immune to jet lag, Mayor Julián Castro has to be greeting the summer with a smile on his face. His first year in office has to be judged a remarkable success.

What's not to like when everyone from the city's grass-roots political organizations to the business leadership to the media consider the 35-year-old mayor friend, ally and trusted leader? It's always a challenge taking the stage as the audience finishes a standing ovation for the departing act. Castro's predecessor, former Mayor Phil Hardberger, started and finished his two terms stronger than any other mayor in contemporary times.

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Somehow, Castro, who came to office amid much promise but also distinct memories of coming up short in his run for the office four years earlier, is succeeding on all scorecards.

The jobs and circumstances — to say nothing of the stakes — are dramatically different, but I can't help thinking about another leader of great promise, President Barack Obama, who inspired so many of us as a candidate, yet has found himself responding to one crisis after another, all while winding down one war and escalating another, in a nation beset by the Great Recession and worsening political division and rancor.

The two best measures for any new officeholder are, first, judging how crisis is met, and second, how opportunity is seized.

By both measures, Castro's success can be traced to his fresh and proactive approach to managing CPS Energy. The utility traditionally has operated at arm's length from City Hall, the mayor content to occupy a de facto seat on the small, publicity-shy board. The engineers ran the utility like, well, a well-run company. Tens of millions of dollars flowed into the city treasury each year, rates stayed competitively low, and service was good.

CPS wasn't front-page news anywhere near as often as, say, SAWS, the water utility.

Then came the debate over expansion of the South Texas Project nuclear facility, a multibillion-dollar commitment over the next decade that already was costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in the planning and pre-construction phase. Candidate Castro and his two opponents favored the expansion, provided costs were kept within the city's means, a view shared by many even as San Antonio finally started to embrace the search for alternative energy sources as the only real path to reduce its carbon footprint.

When CPS officials were caught publicly peddling one price for nuclear expansion while holding a higher price close to their vests, Castro moved decisively and pulled the plug. After a brief battle in the courts, both literally and in terms of public opinion, CPS withdrew as an equal partner in the deal and CPS leaders were fired or demoted. A major storm subsided.

Last week, Castro saw his single-biggest idea to date come to fruition: CPS funding up to $50 million to propel UTSA's College of Engineering into the first ranks of alternative energy research. In a city seldom at the vanguard of any progressive public policy initiative, negotiating such a complex deal amid a recession was quite a feat.

Unlike Phil Hardberger Park, Mission Verde, the restoration of the Mission Reach of the San Antonio River, Haven for Hope or reimagining HemisFair Park, all projects inherited from Hardberger, the CPS-UTSA partnership was Castro's baby.

The last few weeks have taken him to Japan to meet with Toyota's leadership, to China to attend the Shanghai Expo, and back home to celebrate an unprecedented energy research collaboration.

Now, mayor, if only you could generate some significant private-sector economic development in your second year.

Robert Rivard is the editor of the Express-News. E-mail him at rrivard@express-news.net. Or follow him on Twitter at @editorrivard.